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Andalusia


ISSUE:  Summer 1944

Silence like light intense,
Silence the deaf ear of noise . . .
The hid guerrillas wishing to commence
The big war, the war of the full voice.
In rocks, knives, guns, and dynamite, . . .
Or the scratch of scorpions ticking in the night;
And at the church door near the altar boys
One in black frowns with a boy in white . . .
Andalusia, land of naked faces.
Country of silver and green sky; lonely country, country of throngs.
Arabia and Africa in gardens and in arid places.
Country of essential dances and the song of songs.
Andalusia, place of the wine-yellow light;
Place of wind too lucid for hissing in small tones.
Andalusia, where our dead comrades are young bones,
The color of old rock-mountains, bone-yellow and white.
In Andalusia it is
Now a country of silences
Since the war; a hiss
Is the way of the wind,
And what a man says
Is also in his silences,
In the glance he gives behind
In Andalusia, land of naked silences.
Andalusia, you too will feel
The wide wind that unlocks systems:
Franco to skid his heels and reel,
Men to shudder on the cluttered Thames.
A great rushing across the planet drives
Breath into bodies. Shouts and arms awake.
Andalusia, country of silver and green, shake
Like a reclaimed cloak, hum like a city of hives.
In Andalusia it is
Now a country of silences
Since the war; a hiss
Is the way of the wind,
And what a man says
Is also in his silences,
In the glance he gives behind,
In Andalusia, land of naked silences.

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